This invention relates to connecting plumbing such as sill cocks and other fluid controllers to tubular fluid conveyances on buildings and other structures.
Connecting sill cocks and other fluid controllers to such plumbing as water pipes of houses and other buildings has long been a time-consuming plumbing chore during and after construction of houses and other buildings. It was simplified greatly by U.S. Pat. No. 5,385,330, issued to Joseph on Jan. 31, 1995. The Joseph patent described a compression sill-cock flange having a tapered inside sealing wall against which a complimentary tapered sealing member such as a ferrule was sealing-abutted with force from straight-thread screwing of a sill-cock pipe against the sealing member.
Although the Joseph patent departed from use of tapered pipe thread for a plumbing connection of sill cocks to pipes, the Joseph patent did not go far enough to solve all problems as does the present invention. For instance, the entire sill cock and the sill-cock flange must be counter rotated to achieve a seal with a tapered ferrule. This requires disengagement of the sill-cock flange from a building or other structure in order to achieve desired orientation of an outlet aperture on the sill cock. Due to random termination of threading, achieving the desired orientation is not easy nor always achievable. Even though achieved with considerable difficulty, the orientation does not remain constant or fixed when the sill cock is removed and then re-connected or replaced. Orientation of the sill cock and its outlet orifice, therefore, is not exact and can not be made uniform for a plurality of sill cocks, even with considerable time and effort of a plumber.
Further, the Joseph patent is limited to a circumferential inside sealing wall that is tapered conically inward in a direction towards a seal end of a pipe coupling on the sill-cock flange. This restricts selection of sealing members to a double- tapered ferrule.
Examples of other known related but different sill-cock connections that employ various forms of tapered pipe threading and, therefore, are not deemed to be sufficiently similar to this invention for detail comparison include U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,080,520, 3,971,401, 2,210,986, 2,652,224, 4,836,237, 4,316, 481, 4,182,356 and 5,129,416.
Objects of patentable novelty and utility taught by this invention are to provide an adjustable plumbing connector and method which:
allows quick and convenient adjustment of circumferential positioning of a sill cock or other fluid controller on a pipe for desired circumferential orientation in addition to linear positioning of an outlet aperture of the sill cock in relationship to the pipe;
allows use of a selection of sealing members; and
allows use of a selection of attachments of a connector nut to a connector sleeve.
This invention accomplishes these and other objectives with a connector sleeve having a structure-attachment flange on a flange end, a seal surface on a seal end and a nut-retainer ring intermediate the structure-attachment flange and the seal end of an outside periphery of the connector sleeve. A connector nut is contained rotatably on the outside periphery of the connector sleeve with the nut-retainer ring buttressing a circular retainer wall that is intermediate a circumferentially pipe-engagement inside periphery and a larger circumferentially straight-threaded inside periphery of the connector nut. Straight inside threading on the inside periphery of the connector nut is matched to straight outside threading of a fluid-controller sleeve. The pipe-engagement inside periphery of the connector nut and an inside periphery of the fluid-controller sleeve have slidable clearance of an outside periphery of an intended pipe. A seal ring having at least three-surface-seal contact with the seal end of the connector sleeve, a seal end of the fluid-controller sleeve and the outside periphery of the intended pipe is thread-tightened intermediate the seal end of the connector sleeve and the seal end of the fluid-controller sleeve after orienting the sill cock as desired.
Optionally, the nut-retainer ring proximate the seal end of the connector sleeve can be (a) a retainer flange extended radially, (b) a snap ring in a groove, (c) a threaded ring, (d) circumferentially segmented radial extensions, or (e) other nut retainer. Further optionally, the seal ring can be: (a) an O-ring having predetermined resilience, flexibility and memory, (b) a double-tapered ferrule having predetermined resilience, flexibility and memory, (c) a single-tapered ferrule having predetermined resilience, flexibility and memory, or (d) other ring having a geometrical cross section for at least three-surface-sealing contact when squeezed between the seal ends of the connector sleeve and the fluid-controller sleeve. The structure-attachment flange has predetermined structure-attachment structure.
The above and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention should become even more readily apparent to those skilled in the art upon a reading of the following detailed description in conjunction with the drawings wherein there is shown and described illustrative embodiments of the invention.